An Israeli foundation has acquired items belonging to Holocaust victims that were scheduled for auction in Germany in November. “We could not stand by while memory was being sold. It is a moral duty to preserve the past for future generations,” said the head of the organization.
Testimonies of German crimes, including those committed against Poles, which were to be auctioned in Germany, have now arrived in Israel. Among the items offered by the auction house were letters from German concentration camps, documents with detailed information about prisoners, drawings and sketches created by inmates, as well as propaganda posters and armbands bearing the Star of David.
After the issue was publicized by the media and institutions, Polish diplomats managed to halt the auction planned by the Felzmann auction house in Neuss, western Germany. The auction of objects, titled “System of Terror Vol. II 1933-1945,” was canceled.
Polish authorities had demanded that the items be returned to Poland, including to the Auschwitz Museum.
They reached Israel
Media reports indicate that part of these historical testimonies have ended up in Israel. They were purchased by the non-governmental organization Yad Ezer Haber, which operates, among other things, a Holocaust Museum in Haifa.
“We could not stand by while memory was being sold. It is a moral duty to preserve the past for future generations,” said the organization’s president Shimon Sabag.
“The proper place for these objects is a museum, particularly the Holocaust Museum in Haifa, where admission is free and where youth and the wider public can learn about the darkest chapters in the history of the Jewish people,” he added.
The objects were publicly displayed on Monday in the Knesset at a specially organized exhibition.
The organization lists that among the items brought to Israel were clothing, religious objects, and letters. Photographs show suitcases with Jewish names, toiletries, prayer books, and personal belongings of concentration and extermination camp prisoners, as well as the distinctive yellow star marked “Jude.”